Figure 1.--Here we see an American boy wearing a fancy blouse at the turn of the 20th century. The snapshot is unidentified, but the younger child looks to be his brother still wearing a dress.

Here we see an American boy wearing a fancy blouse at the turn of the 20th century. The snapshot is unidentified, but the younger child looks to be his brother still wearing a dress. Girls might have short hair, but the child here has hair combed more like a boy. Notice in fact that the two children have their hair combed similarly. The children look to be about 3-5 years of age.We do not know where the photograph was taken, but it has a mid-Western look to us.

The Children

Here we see two American boys, presumaby siblings. The snapshot is unidentified, but the younger child looks to be his brother still wearing a dress. Girls might have short hair, but the child here has hair combed more like a boy. Notice in fact that the two children have their hair combed similarly. The children look to be about 3-5 years of age.

Chronology

The snapshot is undated, but looks to be taken at the turn of the 20th century. Snapshots were taken before the turn-of-the-20th century, but they were much more common after 1900 when the Kodak Brownie camera was introduced. These fancy blouses wee very common in the early 1900s.

Location

We do not know where the photograph was taken, but it has a mid-Western look to us.

Clothing

Boys commonly wore fancy blouses in the early 20th century. Younger boys often wore just blouses in the summer. Oldeer boys and adults were expected to wear suit jackets, evn in hot weather. His younger brother has not yet been breeched. This was still common at the turn of the century, but declined rapidly in the 1900s. The convention had largely disappeared by the end of te 1910s.

Snap Shots

A reader writes, "Thank you for this. Snaphots have a quality not found in other photographs, an immediacy that makes them seem more real than more formal photographs. With this photograph I am able to believe that at one time small boys really were dressed like that. In my explorations of the net I've found that different societies made the transition from the panicked deer-in-the-headlights look to a more naturalistic look at different times. The first to make that transition were the Americans and Dutch a century ago. The Americans due I suppose to the Kodak Brownie camera making people more comfortable with being photographed, and maybe there was something similar in the Netherlands. By contrast some Eastern European nations only made that transition in the last 30 years. I suppose it came for them when photography had become cheap enough that it was more a personal thing than an official thing. My own grandmother was always a little nervous and stiff around cameras. Maybe that was because she was born in 1893 in the Russian Empire, or maybe it was just because she was shy."